Just when you're bereft of a poem, or flooded with too many to choose from, serendipity hands you something particular. As part of Radio 3's 70-years-of-the-Third-Programme celebration*, Stevie Smith was broadcast, from 1965, reading her now-famous Not Waving But Drowning.

And via youtube we have her discussing (and declaiming) the poem - "I read about a man getting drowned once" was how it got started.

Serendipity juxtaposed this poem with something else I'd been listening to recently, an old radio programme on the imposter syndrome. Made in 2009, re-aired on Radio 4extra; available on the BBC iplayer (in UK) for 29 days from time of writing, here. Doing your job, your best, but feeling like you might at any moment be exposed as an imposter - that would leave you "much further out" than anyone thought. In terms of everyday life, it's not uncommon. Keep on swimmin' ...

*Today Radio 3 is starting a series of short poetry readings from the archive, "Three Score and Ten", at 21.55, starting with Dame Edith Sitwell - "She reads a section from Façade, a series of poems Sitwell wrote to be recited over an instrumental accompaniment by composer William Walton. Then a complete change of tone with her poem Still Falls the Rain written in 1941."

28 September 2016

They have a new hanging system - the threads are tidily held by little squares of card (mountboard) with nicks in the corners, rather than spread over a wad of crumpled newspaper. Here they are, mostly threaded up -

The pots dipped last week were bone dry, with some alarming cracks. In fact I'm about to conclude that the bamboo leaves (crumbling on the board) Just Don't Work - after all, aren't some plant fibres meant to resist water? If paper - my first dipping trial - is at the soggy end of the spectrum, bamboo leaves are right at the other end.

And here's what came out of the kiln! Clunky and boring, mostly - where's the translucency? But they do have a smoothness that "feels like fabric" -

Only one item contained metallic fabric -

"white ladies"

But at least the glass beads worked - sort of. This was a gathered bit of wool with beads in the folds. Removing the clay that covered the beads definitely made a difference - little puddles of glass formed, whereas the other beads often stayed buried -

A few pots were dipped this week, drying ... and hopefully not cracking too much -

I had trekked out to Tottenham to get a tub of casting slip of my own - to avoid the problems of the college running out of it, and to have more control over the consistency and drying. Dipping at home makes it possible to add bases, as I can adjust the height of the hanging system to support the chimneys/tubes to keep them straight until they can support themselves.

This project has a certain amount of engineering challenge in it. Which adds its own interest.

27 September 2016

"The Crossrail Place Roof Garden, a 300-metre enclosed garden which is open daily to the public until 9pm (or sunset in summer). It references both the history and geography of Canary Wharf drawing on the area’s heritage as a trading hub and many of the plants are native to countries visited by ships of the West India Dock Company who unloaded their wares in this very location 200 years ago.

"Crossrail Place sits almost exactly on the Meridian line and the planting is arranged according to which hemisphere they are from with Asian plants such as bamboos to the east, and plants such as ferns from the Americas to the west. Information boards are placed throughout the Roof Garden explaining in more detail about the plants within it." (via)

It offers quite a bit of seating, and as well as the plants waving in the wind there are solid objects that stay still. Like these play-it-yourself pianos -

Representing every form of transport!

And throught the bus windows, the people jiggle when the piano is played

OK let's get on with the drawing ....

Find a seat and draw what you see

Much gnashing of teeth as the leaves waved gently in the breeze

This took 20 minutes, done standing up, starting from "the front",

We all found the subject matter rather challenging. (But the more you do it, the less frightening/difficult/frustrating/etc it is...)

Mary tried out various new media

Sue used colour to advantage

Janet's graceful path gives depth, as does the paler distance

Carol went beyond plants to the structure and beyond

Tool of the week - water pens. Most of us carry them, but how often do we use them?

The red one, with a solid fibre tip, seems to be a new product. The sets are available at various internet sites, eg this one.

No photography was allowed in the show, so we each filled four pages in our sketchbooks, often with notes rather than sketches.

Artist ... Richard Long

Taking a break, half time

View from the gallery out to sea

Having looked intensely at circles for a couple of hours, we then saw them everywhere...

An exhibition about circles ... and cafe to match ...

Wonderful shadows on the terrace

Long's marks

Jetty and town

Within the Harbour Arm

End of the day

A handful of treasures

The most memorable exhibits?

- Theaster Gate's goat on wheels, first heard in another room, clanking its way round a circular track - it has a long title: A Complicated Relationship Between Heaven and Earth, or, When We Believe (part of his winning installation at Artes Mundi 2014)

-the big blue wheel leaning in a corner, which I tried hard to ignore - and have forgotten the artist's name

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are, any or every Tuesday? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.

7 May - V&A, medieval galleries

14 May - Horniman (gardens?)

21 May - Wallace Collection

28 May - Southwark Cathedral

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I had work in "A Letter in Mind" at the Oxo Gallery, September 2017 and again in 2018.